More on the lack of qualified security people

By Luther Martin — December 6, 2011

As I've noted before, some people are claiming that the US government is facing a critical shortage of information security personnel, although this doesn't seem to be reflected by things like market forces.

The recent GAO report "Cybersecurity Human Capital" (PDF) also doesn't seem to support the claims that there's such a shortage. The GAO found that federal agencies were generally able to find qualified information security staff. The single notable exception that they list is the Department of Defense, which was still able to fill over 90 percent of their information security positions.

So I still can't find any reliable data that indicates that there's a shortage, critical or not, of information security personnel these days.